I Think We’re Raising Sheldon Cooper – Fri, 03Apr2015

Happy Good Friday to all. Strange coincidence that our first week coincides with Holy Week. Jesus’ week started great but ended not so great. Mine? Well, you be the judge.

#5  Made it to Level 169 on Candy Crush Your Manhood into Tiny, Tiny Bits.

I really, really hate this game.

Not only did I NOT quit playing but I also did NOT advance more than two levels. Why do I bother? I may not have stated this before, so I will now: I refuse to purchase any of the in-app power-ups the soul crushing designers of the game have implemented in order to drain your bank account to the point that the World Bank calls emergency meetings to decide whether or not they should provide assistance to your crushed and depleted funds. And I can proudly say that I never have. I once spent a long boring week working offshore in the Gulf of Mexico and I found solace in the open arms of some drag racing harlot game on my iPad (not DRAG, but DRAG RACING; it’s an important distinction). Fifty dollars later my conscience (read: my wife) forced me to vow not to do in-app purchases ever again. A digital golden trophy of an imaginary quarter-mile championship isn’t much of a draw on eBay. Eating fifty dollars’ worth of bowling pins would have been money better spent. I really, really hate this game.

Thumbs down.

#4  Marveled at How Few Indians There are in My World.

I didn’t meet anyone this week with an Indian name (remember, I’m looking for Punjab, not Breaking Wind). Anyway, not only did I not meet one, I didn’t even SEE one. Apparently, I’m currently living in a world so bright and white that Clorox is calling and asking me for helpful hints. Well, that’s not entirely true. My neighbor is Asian-American (don’t ask for his name, Idk), and my children attend public schools alongside African-Americans (Idk their names nor their parents’ names), and I’ve spent many a day working in Texas with many Latino-Americans (Gonzalez or Rodriguez, I think). This is quite embarrassing. Now that I think about it, I could have at least called one of ten thousand different technology help lines and met someone from India. Of course, he would probably have told me, with a thick Indian accent, that his name is Kevin.

This is deeply embarrassing. Two thumbs down, without prejudice. Literally.

#3  Planted a Garden

Success! My second daughter and I plunged into the compost with both feet. The lumber for the box cost $43, the compost/topsoil/tear-inducing manure mix cost $57, and the plants cost $40. I’m all in for about $140. We planted cucumbers, squash, tomatoes, okra, bell peppers, banana peppers, a dead body (more compost), carrots, cantaloupe and strawberries. So far, everything is very happy and we feel like genuine farmers. She particularly loved it. She kept feeling sorry for everyone else still in the house either taking a nap or playing Wii or searching the app store for a gardening game. I learned something about her that day – she is happiest when she is dirty, and I love that. I shoveled compost, she rolled in it. I planted a garden, she talked to it. I drank iced tea, and she did too. We both check it every day, either together or separately. Love, love, love.

Four green thumbs up.

#2  Taught My Kindergarten Son How to Divide. Next, He Will Teach Quantum Physics to Me.

My son is so bored with addition that he has consumed himself with figuring how many minutes and seconds are in any given period of time. He now knows that there are seven hours, or 420 minutes or 25,200 seconds in a school day and announces from bed every morning that he emphatically does not want to go to school for 25,200 seconds. I couldn’t handle him constantly asking me multiplication questions anymore, so I taught him how to multiply. Four x three is the same as adding four together three times. Two x five is the same as adding two together five times, etc. When he realized this, his eyes lit up and instantly all pencil and paper in our house became his tools to unlocking the universe’s secrets. Having mastered 9 x 6 = 54, he then deduced that these mathematical functions can go in reverse. So, in the same day, I taught him division. He’s in kindergarten. I remember having his enthusiasm for learning when I was a kid. If there was some knowledge in the world that existed but I didn’t have, I remember how exciting it was to finally be clued in. He is the same way. Instead of dreading math problems, he gets downright giddy at learning them and even more so when he solves them. More love, love, love.

2 x 2 thumbs up.

#1  Started a New Blog.

This one has kicked off OK and needs no expounding, so I’ll leave you with this story.

My two youngest were playing Mario Cart the other day and yelling incessantly at the screen for reasons that are important only to kids and absolutely no one else in the history of the world, ever. I tried to block it out until I heard one of them yell something I never thought I would hear in the history of the world, ever – ‘Get Honkey Dong!’

Huh?!

It turns out that they had renamed all of the characters in the game, and they decided that the name Donkey Kong isn’t suitable for our household. Honkey Dong, on the other hand, is far more acceptable.

O.M.G.

While some of the other names may have been worthy of the gaming hall of fame, my memory of them was drowned in the shock of hearing my kids yell, ‘Catch Honkey Dong!’ ‘Honkey Dong is chasing me!’ ‘You be Honkey Dong this time!’ There are moments in parenthood when you reflect upon the paths that were taken which led to this point and sometimes you can pinpoint events which may have led up to this moment. This was not one of them. Did they accidentally create these words from midair? Have they heard them somewhere else and if so, do they have any clue what they mean? I don’t think we’ll ever know for sure, but for now we’re content to let the innocence of childhood remain so, even if it means pouring concrete in the neighbors ears whenever the Wii is turned on.

One limp thumb.

Happy Easter. See you on Monday.

Hello world!

My name is Champ Cox. Yes, that is my given birth name. No, I am not a porn star.

What I am is overeducated and underemployed. I have a Master’s Degree plus thirty hours, but Master of Divinty degrees don’t pay what they used too (unless your belief system includes a god who can be strong-armed into giving you a private jet if you claim it hard enough – I’m looking at you Joel Creflo Copeland). So awhile back I returned to the life that I knew before seminary – the oil and gas industry. All has been well until recently. The industry is in a bit of a downturn nowadays. This is great for everyone who buys gasoline, but not so much for everyone who makes a living getting it out of the ground.

All of that leads to this: I have a lot of new spare time on my hands. While this may sound good at first, the problem is that I don’t have a real hobby. Years of being gone for days on end dissuades one from participating in homebound fun that others take for granted. Plus, watching loads of TV and catching up on ‘private moments’ with the wife eventually reach a saturation point (The TV for me, the ‘other’ for her). Combining the two only makes it worse. No, really.

Anyway, I need some things to do, specifically cheap things. This list will be a weekly post of things I intend to do during the following week. At the end of the week I will post again to update my efforts. Ready? Ok, here goes.

#5 – Stop playing Candy Crush.

Remember what I said about watching loads of TV (and the ‘other’). Well, both of these pale in comparison next to the amount of time I spend playing Candy Crush. It is the stupidest game in the history of portable electronic devices, right up there with Toilet Time (yes, it’s real and on the app store) and spelling dirty words on a calculator. It should be renamed ‘Soul Crush’ or ‘Crush Your Ability to Get Off the Couch and Live a Productive Life,’ or my new personal motto, ‘Candy for the Crushed and Lifeless Loser.’ Unfortunately, it redeems itself by being a fantastic way to kill time. Although this may seem like a new hobby to embrace, I spend far too much time trying to get three, maybe FOUR, blue candies in a row (GET OUT OF MY WAY YELLOW!). And I really hate Odus. What’s wrong with that idiot? Find a more stable loft to set your lazy, soul-crushing rump on, or expect me to hire Wreck-It Ralph to kick your nocturnal a**! I hate this game. I’m on level 167.

#4 – Meet someone with an Indian name.

Allow me to clarify – I mean Indian as in from India, not American Indian. Taj Mahal, not the Warrior Chief Hotel and Casino.

I live in Louisiana. Do you know how many people from India live here? Me neither. I only know of one man of Indian ancestry in the entire state, and I think he’s trying to move to Washington D.C. ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to run for president on a conservative platform.’ Anyway, there may be loads of them, but I don’t know any personally. We don’t have to become best friends, I just want to meet him/her/it and shake his/her/it’s hand. The only problem I foresee with this challenge is that I may have to go to a hospital to accomplish it. I don’t hate hospitals, but I think they frown upon unsolicited people wandering through the halls looking for the chief of medicine without an appointment. This may be harder than I anticipated.

#3 – Plant a garden.

This is one I have wanted to do for some time, but again, lengthy periods of time far away from home (then catching up on the ‘other’ – Yes, sex! I’m talking about sex!), as well as lack of remote gardening technology (remardenology?) have put this one on the back burner for quite a while. I have read that the newest thing in gardening is raised bed gardens. Since gardening is as old as humankind and the last improvement was opposable thumbs, any new advances in gardening technology strike me as a once in a lifetime event, thus worth looking into. The idea is that you can build a box yourself, fill it with dirt and plants, and voila! – a new garden which is closer to your knees than your ankles. As with any new and exciting technology, you can spend as much money as you want, from the customized insert-tab-A-into-slot-B cedar box kits to homemade steal-some-used-lumber-from-the-trash-pile-of-the-new-construction-down-the-street kit. In my current circumstance, cheaper is better, so cedar trees rejoice!

#2 – Teach my kindergarten son how to multiply.

This isn’t a noble ambition, rather an effort to get him to stop asking me the same question over and over ALL THE TIME. He has discovered that one minute equals 60 seconds. So now, half of our day is spent answering, ‘How many seconds is ten minutes?’, or “How many seconds is 60 minutes?’, or my personal favorite ‘How many seconds before I die?’ Wait, what? Is anyone else’s kindergartner fascinated with the time of his death? No? Just me? Ok. I don’t know if multiplication will help that, but he’s not quite ready for seminary-prepared answers, so for now it’s just the multiplication. After that maybe I’ll teach him how to spell bad words on a calculator.

#1 – Start a new blog

So far, so good.

See you on Friday.